Doubly Good

There’s a moment in Lilli Carré’s minicomic “The Thing about Madeline” where you really get that you’re reading a real story and not another installment in the Saga of the Mundane. It’s a little later than the point where that story actually begins: not where Madeline meets her doppelganger/self for the first time – that’s just a plot twist – but when Madeline the First gets “into the habit of watching herself through windows”:

Robert Stanley Martin correctly identified this moment as the place where the story’s main narrative idea slips from metaphor into dramatic irony, as the doppelganger is able to find the happiness in her life that Madeline could not. His review is so spot on I’m just going to link to it rather than trying to cover those aspects of the narrative myself.

But those panels also mark the place where the visuals take over doing that metaphorical work that the narrative leaves behind: the images of double Madeline continue to manifest the theme of alienation from oneself and one’s life while the plot (and facial expressions) hold up the ironic narrative.

What’s particularly beautiful and satisfying about this is not just that the visuals effortlessly carry significations that would become increasingly labored in prose. It’s also that the comic itself is now doubled right along with Madeline: the themes of alienation and happiness continue side-by-side formally in the same way that Alienated Madeline and her Happy Doppelganger populate the narrative. What this allows, then, is two separate story arcs: a literal one about Madeline and the Doppelganger, and a sustained metaphorical one about the relationship between alienation and happiness. Toward the end of the book, when Happy Madeline is visited by her own Alienated Doppelganger, the scenes from the beginning are recast – on a second read or in retrospect, it’s possible to see Happy Doppelganger and Happy Madeline as the same “character.” In that reading, self-alienation is always lurking and, as Robert points out, the easy moralizing criticisms of Alienated Madeline are much harder to make. The powers of circumstance and perspective get attention in a way they could not if the story had stayed more personal, eschewing that metaphorical strand.

Carré’s work always balances very deftly on the line between ironic detachment and literary self-awareness, both traditional dramatic irony as well as the more formalist kind. Her characters often have these very distinctive noses that are a mashup of Mary Poppins and Raggedy Ann, and they alone are sufficient to make her drawing style immediately recognizable. In the case of The Thing about Madeline, this stylistic quirk works as support for the formal edifice: they mark the characters as “drawn,” and the effect of this signature is to anchor those characters to the visual plane of the comic. They restrict the universality of the characters and contribute to our sense of detachment from them.

Instead, the face carries the metaphor, more directly. The facial features are less “cartoony” and more influenced by “art” faces like the ones discussed here and in comments. For me, the loss of this creative “signature” lets the animation breathe and allows the critical, slighly neurotic self-awareness of ironic detachment to mutate into the genuine double entendre that marks the best literary characterizations. The physical marker of style is less overt, but there is no loss of metaphorical sophistication (relatively at least; the animation’s metaphors are less ambitious than the mini-comic’s). The characters have become less “self-conscious”, although less well-developed in this less narrative piece, and I think because of this, the seams between the form and its significance are better hidden. I don’t think that’s just an effect of the film as opposed to comics. Identification with these characters is less detached even in still frames, despite the much more distant narrative characterization.

It seems to be a one-off, though; Nine Ways to Disappear maintains the signature style, as do Carré’s previous animations. (The nose is put to exceptional effect in What Hits the Moon; watch the way it sustains the character’s identity as her face ages around it.) But I think the comparison illustrates some of the limitations of too much “handwriting”: after awhile, it begins to feel like deliberate self-citation. Unless the handwriting is used in some meaningful way, it can interfere with other effects. Head Garden is still discernably Lilli Carré, but in the absence of that distinctively marked facial feature, her graceful but slightly awkward lines — like the talented too-tall girl in ballet class — get to take center stage. I hope to see a sustained story from her in the style of Head Garden sometime soon.

=========================================================

This review is based on the black-and-white mini-comic version of The Thing about Madeline. More information on the SPX Animation Showcase is available here.

“What’s particularly beautiful and satisfying about this is not just that the visuals effortlessly carry significations that would become increasingly labored in prose.”

Doubles and doppelgangers are used in a lot of literature, from the Secret Sharer to Confessions of a Justified Sinner to Borges’ semi-send-up of the genre, “The Double”. And of course they’re also used in film; Carre’s story actually echoes some recent David Lynch efforts, for example. Do you think these prose (and perhaps film) efforts are labored? Or is Carre doing something very different with the tropes that would make them labored in prose?

I did like “Madeline” a lot…but the familiarity of the doppelganger material did make it feel a little bit like a pomo exercise to me. Unlike Robert I thought the Lagoon made more use of the specific visual resources of comics (by turning sound into space; by making bold leaps in time), as well as being more thoughtful and daring in its use of the genres it was using (gothic also, but a more pulp variant than in “Madeline”.)

I don’t think they’re labored in film: I do think they tend to be labored in prose. Not to a fault, necessarily, but here it just sort of fills its purpose without any work at all…

I think what you mention is why Robert chooses to focus on the shift into irony…the point of the sentence following the one you quote though is the one that’s more important to me, the way you don’t get first metaphor and then irony, but first metaphor and then both metaphor and irony. There are multiples of doublings, which is really nice.

I had read this last year after SPX, actually, and loved it. I need to read The Lagoon soon…

“Death and the Compass” is another great Borges doubles story. Also Auster’s New York Trilogy…based on Beckett’s Trilogy to some degree (and Beckett’s Molloy is a particularly great “double” story)–I liked the Carre story when I read it–but it’s a stretch to call “doubles” in prose “labored” at the outset. It’s both not uncommon and has certainly been done with panache…

Doppelgangers in prose literature are always constructs, though, because characters in prose literature are always constructs. Comics has bodies. It’s not that drawings of bodies are unmediated, but there’s an immediacy to character in comics that makes the doubling effect more literal and direct. All Carre had to do to get the effect was draw the same body twice. There’s never a moments hesitation or question that the characters are doppelgangers: in literature, in every case I can think of, there either has to be some statement of it, or figuring it out is the point of the story. The characters aren’t just there, twinned, without any exposition or construction of their sameness…

It’s worth noting that in comics, doppelganger-ing relies on the exact same principle as character continuity: you draw the figure twice in two sequential panels, you have a character. You draw the figure twice in the same panel, you have a doppelganger. There’s no equivalently simple manipulation in literature. It takes more effort to get it across. That’s really all I meant by that point…

Doesn’t she need to tell you that it is in fact the same body? That is, Carre’s characters aren’t so distinctive or so individualized visually — the text that identifies this as a doppelganger situation seems like it would be fairly important if you’re not to think that these are just two characters who happen to look alike. (Something which happens not infrequently in manga for example.)

I wonder if you couldn’t get a similar effect in prose through using the same name, or referring to one character by two names. (Lastel/One-Thumb, for example. And if anybody gets that reference, I apologize.)

Super-hero comics in the silver age were obsessed with this kind of doubling, I think. There were always evil doubles of various sorts popping up — perhaps buttressing your argument that it’s especially easy to do in comics….

Huh, I don’t know. I think I thought it was pretty clear from the pictures but it’s hard to tell since the text was there and I can’t separate out the two. The last panel, though, is the shape of Madeline’s head loosely sketched out in cigarette smoke and it’s clearly her, so I guess I thought it was pretty well marked visually…

But I should be very clear that I absolutely don’t mean to say that it’s uncommon or impossible in prose — it’s a great prose effect but it takes a pretty high degree of craft to do it. I mean, we’re saying it happens in Borges and Auster, who aren’t slouches in the craft department. You don’t see it happening a lot in pulp novels. So yeah, I think I’d consider the evil doubles to be support for that…All I mean is that the comics idiom just seems to offer it up effortlessly to the cartoonist/creator: “here, here’s this great effect for you to use.” And I think Carre really takes great advantage of it.

Au contraire. Doubling happens all the time in fantasy novels of varying quality. The reference I humiliatingly made above is to a shared world fantasy series edited by Robert Aspirin called Thieves World. Michael Moorcock wrote, like, 40 books or something based on doubling tropes. Ursula Le Guin has an amazing use of doubling in the first Wizard of Earthsea book. Oh, and I just read Joe Haldeman’s “Chameleon” which is both not especially good and almost entirely about doppelganger’s….

None of these (except the Le Guin) are as well done in any sense as Carre’s, but there’s no lack of people using doppelganger’s in pulp….

it’s funny because (& sorry for rambling about freaking post-war belgian comics again) i’ve just read an early lucky luke story where he meets his evil double, & of course hijinks ensue (lucky luke almost gets hanged by mistake, etc.). what’s interesting is that the story ends with a showdown between hero & double — & even though we assume that lucky luke came out a victor, & that it’s the bad guy who died in the gunfight, it’s actually not explicit at all who did win. it’s a pretty weird sequence, actually. i wish i had a scanner nearby to show it.

Noah: Very true. But it’s still necessary to set it up in a way that it isn’t in comics ( it’s probably unfair to LeGuin to call her “pulp”; I’d just call that genre…) I think it’s probably not only labored but pretty laborious in many of those cases: I can think of a lot of instances in sci fi where it’s exceptionally laborious.

I’m willing to change the word “labored” for writers like Auster and Borges, as it seems to carry the connotation for you of “laborious” rather than the more neutral “requiring work,” but not so much for Michael Moorcock…

suat: didn’t know about that radio show. the similarities are kind of striking of course, but i can’t see too many ways in which morris would have been aware of that show, unless we stipulate that it was somehow broadcast in belgium. i mean, he did go to the US in 1950 where he met with kurtzman & al, so that would be the obvious way–but then, the show is from the 1930s–& morris had already made a few stories with the character by 1950, including the double story (“le sosie de lucky luke”) which dates from 1947-48.

then, there’s something about the site linked that makes it look a tad fishy, but that may just be me…

to get back to the doppelgänger motif, i don’t know about US comics, but it seems like it’s an easy trope for a cartoonist to employ, the least “realistic” the style the better. no?

Actually, in prose, you could argue the same thing. Every time a character name is referenced–or the word “I” for a narrator– you have the same kind of repetition (of the signifier) that you have in repetitive drawings/sequence. The only distinction is that we tend to think of visual art in terms of static or simultaneous time (one instant), while prose seems more “naturally” to be a sequential/temporal medium. Therefore, we’re not surprised when they same character turns up over and over again on the same page (because s/he is moving forward in time). Comics are sequential, though, obviously…so they’re more likely to reflect prose in this sense. (Still, I’ve made the same point as Caro elsewhere–so I can’t disagree too strenuously–It’s just another example of time’s doubly simultaneous/sequential temporal structure).

In other “cowboy Luke double” news, we can certainly see “Luke the Drifter” as Hank Williams’ double, right?

Finally, I’m not sure how “labored/laborious” doubling has to be in prose. It can take some setting up (it certainly does in Molloy), but in something like “Death and the Compass,” all it takes is to give the two characters names that are echoes/versions of one another (Scharlach/Lonnrot)–or a cheap one liner— “Looking at Jones was like staring into a mirror”. After that sentence, you can’t help seeing Jones as my double. (He’s one of the Jones boys)

I think it’s a pretty subtle point and I don’t think we disagree: it’s just a question of emphasis. If I were onlytalking about prose I’m sure I wouldn’t come up with “labored.” It’s just that it’s so easy in comics that relatively speaking, the prose version is harder. I definitely didn’t intend the statement I made in this to be any sort of summative theoretical statement.

Sounds like we can probably agree that it’s a really theoretically interesting bit of the comics form though…